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Foster: Enbridge seizes the initiative from Keystone

“Green groups have nevertheless achieved their immediate purpose, which is to establish that they occupy the White House.”

About the ongoing Keystone XL saga, Peter Foster writes in the Financial Post,

…Now Keystone’s main problem may not be environmental obstructionism but competition from rival pipeline giant Enbridge, which has seized the initiative in shipping Alberta’s oil to the Gulf Coast…

[Transcanada] rival Enbridge announced on Wednesday the purchase of a 50% stake in the Seaway Crude Pipeline System between the Gulf Coast and Cushing, whose direction it plans to reverse. The line could be carrying 150,000 barrels a day to Gulf refineries by the second quarter of next year, increasing to a potential 400,000 b/d with additional pumping capacity. This comes on top of Enbridge’s plan, announced in September, to build the 800,000 b/d Wrangler line along a similar route (with its new Seaway partner, Enterprise Products Partners LP) while increasing its capacity to ship oil into Cushing via its Flanagan South venture from Illinois…

This week’s burst of activity on the pipeline front suggests that technical and managerial ingenuity can find a way around environmental obstructionism and even political expediency. One just wishes that the petroleum and petroleum service industries were more effective at confronting campaigns of misinformation, and less inclined to appease their enemies and even adopt their tactics.